Britain's conservative movement

This is the second of three ten point briefings to mark one year of ConservativeHome.com.  The first focused on the 'politics of and'.

(1) What is the conservatism?  Is it what the Conservative Party does? It must be more than that and it is.  In America conservatives form a big part of the Republican Party’s coalition but there are also more libertarian and more pragmatic members.  There are a diminishing number of conservatives across the political aisle; in the increasingly liberal Democratic Party.  The British Conservative Party includes conservatives but there are many conservatives outside its ranks. There are conservatives in the churches and in the environmental movement.  There are strong defenders of the nation state in other parties.  The fact that the Conservative Party is only part of conservatism is why this site calls its main blog the ToryDiary.

(2) Conservatism can be understood in procedural or substantial ways.  For proceduralists, conservatism is more of a disposition than a set of beliefs.  It is anti-utopian and immersed in tradition.  It favours the small and local over the big and remote.  It tends to revere the sacred more than the secular.  Russell Kirk was a great interpreter of this conservatism and Crunchy Conservatism is a contemporary manifestation.

(3) The more substantial interpretation of conservatism is the concern of this website.  Conservatism has no defining text in the way that communism had Marx’s manifesto.  Substantial conservatism has many overlapping ingredients.  They include beliefs in property ownership, smaller government, ancient liberties, national defence, the importance of the family, personal responsibility, religious freedom, environmental stewardship and the dignity of every human life.

(4) Not every ‘substantial conservative’ holds the beliefs outlined in point three and some of the beliefs matter a lot more to some.  The conservative movement is at its best when it thinks of itself as a coalition.  In ‘The Right Nation’ Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait likened Ronald Reagan’s coalition to the armies that medieval kings assembled.  The soldiers wore the tunics of the noblemen who hired them.  The shields that adorn the top of this blog attempt to capture the same idea.  We come to ‘the party’ with different priorities and we succeed insofar as we can fight together, against the common enemy.  We fail when we stopping seeing ourselves as a coalition and start acting like a sect – insisting on litmus tests for membership and excluding those with different priorities.

(5) Conservative-minded people in Britain – and that includes donors, in particular – have long expected the Tory Party to shoulder a disproportionate share of the task of converting Britain to conservatism.  The more policy-orientated conservatives often feel frustrated at the Tory leadership’s unwillingness to argue more aggressively for lower taxation, for more support for marriage or for repatriation of powers from Brussels.  But these all-eggs-in-one-basket expectations for the Tory party are unfair.  The Tory party has to win elections in time periods usually no longer than three or four years.  The party cannot be expected to do all the medium and long-term work of converting a majority of the nation to conservative ideas.

(6) The retreat of conservatism in Britain is a product of the weakness of the non-party side of the conservative movement.  We have a few think tanks – many of them very good – but they are not campaigning organisations.  They tend to produce worthy pamphlets that are (a) too inaccessible to be enjoyed by a large number of people and (b) at the same time insufficiently rigorous to be taken seriously in academia.  The think tanks get their work reported in conservative newspapers but they have no campaigning strategy to get their ideas embraced by a large number of voters.  The other big weakness is the lack of any conservative broadcasting.  With TV and radio more powerful shapers of opinion than newspapers, UK conservatives really suffer from the dominance of the red corner BBC and the absence of talk radio and a broadcaster like Fox News.

(7) Fortunately there are some groups in the conservative corner who do understand the importance of campaigning...

• Lord Kalms’ Business for Sterling was extraordinarily successful in pursuing its single-minded attempt to convert a majority of British businessmen to opposition to the euro.
• The Renewing One Nation unit (again funded by Stanley Kalms from its 2000 inception) and Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice have, through six years of tortoise-like dedication, put compassion back at the heart of Toryism.
• The Countryside Alliance’s campaign for the liberty of rural communities was non-partisan but deeply conservative in its agenda.
• One of the most exciting groups to have emerged recently is The Taxpayers’ Alliance.  Aiming to replicate the success of America’s taxpayer unions, TPA has already produced a best-selling book – The Bumper Book of Government Waste – and, in alliance with the Daily Express, has started to convert the public against inheritance tax.

(8) A particular weakness of Britain’s conservative movement is the lack of investment in youth.  Conservative Future – after the excesses of the Federation of Conservative Students under Mark MacGregor – has become a disciplined servant of CCHQ.  Donal Blaney (interpreter for ConservativeHome of Morton Blackwell’s Laws of the Political Process) has formed the Young Britons’ Foundation to recruit and mentor a new conservative generation but the YBF’s resources are limited.  The long-term health of conservatism depends upon investing in young people and in organisations that will generate the ideas of tomorrow.

(9) America has the most developed of conservative movements.  Through its network of think tanks, campaigning organisations, broadcast outlets and WebRoots the movement generates and propagates ideas.  This movement spends a huge proportion of its time supporting the Republican Party by providing it with money, ideas and activists.  It regularly trains its guns on the enemies of conservatism – not just in the Democratic Party but also in the old media and in other sections of the liberal-left establishment.  It is independent of the Republican Party, however, and has recently become restless as George W Bush has failed to control federal spending.  Last year it torpedoed the nomination of Harriet Miers to the US Supreme Court. ConservativeHome.com is not part of the Conservative Party.  It is supportive (eg here) but not uncritical (eg here).  ConservativeHome is committed to see the ‘politics of and’ succeed and the Tory Party is undoubtedly the primary vehicle for this… but it is not the only one.  The Inaugural Conservative Movement Awards seek to celebrate the work of conservatives outside of the Tory party.

(10) Britain’s conservative movement has not had the resources of its transatlantic counterpart.  British business folk have poured all of their money into CCO.  A conservative wanting to initiate a campaign has faced major financial barriers to entry – the need to produce a magazine or hire expensive consultants in order to get attention.  The arrival of the internet and blogosphere has changed all that.  ‘The Wiki age’ provides Britain’s conservative movement with enormous opportunities and that will be the subject of the next Ten Point Briefing...

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Related link: EU Serf on 'Finding the common ground'.

Comments

[Donal Blaney]

I couldn't have said it better myself! The next election will only be won if we have a vibrant conservative movement working for the election of principled conservatives. If we fail to energise and enthuse small c conservatives, we will not deserve power.

[Chad]

If you had to describe what conservatism means to you in just two words how would you respond?

For me, it is "small government"

It is for that reason that I seek a party that:

a: Seeks to withdraw from the massive, remote central project that is the EU because it cannot be reformed to work in a small government way. If it could, I would be pushing for reform but it cannot.

b: Opposes any form of state funding of political parties as this replaces independence parties with big goverment state vehicles.

c: Opposes a central national ID database.
One great big inefficient and counter-productive, large government project that increases central control.

Unfortunately, the current incarnation of the Tory Party, the CamCons, seems to be pro-EU, has proposed state funding of political parties and has not opposed the national id database.

[John Hustings]

I think it is difficult to "energise" the conservative movement when the Tory Party is disowning conservative ideas. Nevertheless, I think this is why we shouldn't be distracted by party political loyalties and continue to espouse what we believe in -- even when no political party does so.

[Simon C]

"If you had to describe what conservatism means to you in just two words how would you respond?"

I would demand three:

"Freedom, family, nation".

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Thank you for an excellent article Tim. Much of this is about challenging and changing the dominant liberal cultural consensus. It seems to me that this objective, together with establishing a self-confident & unashamed conservative alternative, is the key task to which all the different elements of the conservative movement, in their own spheres, should be devoted.

[Neil Reddin]

Spot on.

Conservatism, to me:

Individual freedom through a smaller state, and the preservation of that freedom through strong defence.

[C Hodgson]

Individual freedom, a strong state, economic liberalism

[Wat Tyler]

Excellent summary. I don't know why it's taken the conservative coalition so long to get round to it, but I think we have finally realised we can't leave everything to the Party. Plus, it's so much more fun getting stuck in rather than fretting and griping on the sidelines.

Thank Gore for the internet.

[Richard]

Tradition, order, liberty, patriotism and capitalism would be the central tenets I'd highlight.

[matt wright]

I am fascinated by this partcular thread. It is an extremely important thread. Time and time again in research the public (including our own supporters) are telling us that they do not understand what the Conservative Party stands for. Some of the posts above might seem to touch on what we stand for but not in a way that makes much sense to most people today. Mostly they just seem to be lists of one word concepts. Take freedom (which comes up often above), of course this is important but people today are much more savvy - they know that collective or community action is also important. To me freedom has to be balanced by responsibility or it is almost meaningless. Somehow we are not expressing in simple and readily accessable terms what 21st century Conservatism should be. This is what we and DC must do,

Matt

[Simon C]

I would agree with that Matt, although the restricted one-word concepts stem from Chad's invitation at the beginning of the thread.

For me, limiting myself to 3 words to sum up conservatism, "family", as the bedrock of community, is the way to introduce the framework of mutual obligations responsibilities and support that we all need to nourish. Freedom does not operate in a vacuum. The measure of our maturity and character is about how we use our freedom.

[John Hustings]

I agree with you Matt. I'd like DC to be articulating what Conservativism stands for. As you rightly say, most of the public is ignorant of what it means.

Sadly, Cameron seems more interested in setting up artificial dragons to slay in order to give the false impression of "change", rather than articulate to the wider public just how attractive traditional conservative values really are.

[Peter]

I have to disagree with this thread as by splitting into little groups(with all of them having their own little Hitlers with no control over them) will only do one thing" keep Labour in". Its nice to have a debate but with first past the post any chance of having a second right wing or centre right party will kill us off quicker than anything that Blair and co can do?
As for Cameron going on about more Gas powered stations make me sick after what happened with Ukraine but at least Tymoshenko came second in the election, with this does this blog support her or Our Ukraine?